F-100 (oz12680)

About this Plan

F-100. Peanut rubber sport-scale model.

Quote: "Rubber Powered F-100, by Dick Baxter. Getting involved with rubber-powered jet models couldn't be easier than with this 'imagination scale' Peanut-size copy of North American's famous supersonic fighter.

Jets make difficult free flight flying scale models, but this semi-scale fighter is easy to build and fun to fly. Most people recognize it as a caricature of an F-100. If you like the semi-scale concept you can take lots of liberties with details and have a lot of fun without too much effort.

Building this F-100 is about like building a Bostonian. Being intended to fly well, you can leave off a lot of stuff to keep the weight down and increase performance and simplify construction. The model uses a trapezoidal fuselage cross-section and single-surface wing and tail covering. The trapezoid gives the fuselage a lot of shape without using formers or lots of stringers. The single-surface covering saves weight. The prop shouldn't be there, of course, but is sort of hidden by using transparent plastic blades which are hard to see when the plane is 50 feet up.

There are only a few things to look out for in the construction.

The fuselage width is specified at four stations: the nose, tail, and leading and trailing edges of the wing. Make the cross-braces for these four stations 1/8-inch shorter than the dimensions shown on the plan, then cut the rest of the cross-members to fit.

Make the prop from a transparent plastic drinking cup. Take care to keep it clean during gluing to keep from spoiling the appearance. Don't choose one of the acrylic plastic cups; although they are wonderfully clear, they're too brittle for this application. I used a plastic cup that came from the grocery store, where it was intended for packaging salad. Don't use a commercial plastic prop - the airplane will be nose heavy.

If you use a thin plastic (.015-inch or so) for the blades, you will probably need to add a doubler starting at the blade root and extending out about 3/4 of an inch to avoid blade cracking. I used CA to attach the prop blades to the hub. I had some trouble with the prop blades getting knocked off the hub using the CA, so be sure to abrade the mating surfaces where the plastic contacts the hub.

The prop hub is 3/32- or 1/8-inch hard-wood dowel or bamboo. The prop pitch is set by making the blade angle about 30 degrees about 1/2-inch in from the tip. A prop jig is very helpful in matching the blade angles, which is really necessary for good performance..."

Direct submission to Outerzone.

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